This sight is often terrifying to see in the rearview mirror.

This one can be terrifying to see on the HeroClix map.

“What?” someone’s asking. “In a game that has the nigh-indestructible Bug (Batman V007) in it, you list the COP CAR as number one?”

Yeah, I do.

First, it’s got all the ridiculous advantages that all the new Vehicles do: auto-breakaway, taxi ability, range attacks out of adjacency and long, long dials full of long power runs at a heavy discount.

It’s also a great support piece, with Enhancement and Perplex for adjacent allies (who it’s likely taxiing anyway).

But it’s the Pilot Abilities that make the GCPD Cruiser (V004) leap to the top.

Cuffed To The Bumper, activated by any “GCPD” or “Gordon” piece, gives the car Plasticity coupled with a complete nerfing of the automatic breakaway abilities that usually render Plasticity useless. More than that: those characters can’t fly, giant-step or even TELEPORT past it! With a 2×4 base, this ability gives the Cruiser an unprecedented degree of board control!

Clear The Streets is even worse: by simply moving through an opponent’s square, the Cop Car can deal 1 penetrating damage (WHAT Impervious roll? Hello, Mystics?) and completely reposition it 3 squares away.

Just by MOVING. No attack roll needed. And with Willpower, do it twice.

The GCPD Cruiser is a silver bullet to so many tactics in HeroClix.

• Stealth. Knock Batman in the open.
• Mystics. “Clear The Streets” isn’t an attack.
• Charge/multibase/Great Size’s ability to ignore knockback. “CTS” doesn’t care.
• JSA/BatEnemy/Syndicate/Defenders chains. Busted.
• Hypersonic/LeapClimb. Cuffed by bonds made of Kryptonite-irradiated adamantium alloy with multi-phase dampeners and mystical wards on ’em, apparently.
• Damage reducers.
• Attack avoiders (Shape Change, Super Senses, Combat Reflexes).

And probably more I forgot to name. There are some crazier combos out there, but none are encapsulated in one piece like this, and the Cop Car probably goes a ways toward shutting many of those combos down anyway.

At just under 100 points to activate all this, the GCPD Cruiser is the most torrid tactic of 2012.

____

OK, that end this “Top Ten” that replaced the usual “best of” list. But while this one showed the worst stuff players had to face, it in no way represents the actual worst pieces of 2012. That’s coming next week, as the retrospective continues! Stay tuned.

Down to the #2 most torrid things in 2012 HeroClix: Ziran the Tester and Thanos Issue #1

I griped about Ziran back in October. Quoting (with some hindsighted copyediting):

“There are a lot of characters and game elements that can punish opponents with by using solid power combos, huge damage numbers, ease of attacking and staunch defenses. There aren’t many that punish opponents equally for building such into their team or largely leaving same OFF.”

The colossal’s stupid Testing trait harshly punishes any team built to effectively fight Ziran and any team that passes the test can’t effectively fight Ziran. As if fighting colossals weren’t hard enough already.

Thanos (Infinity Gauntlet 008, Issue #1) doesn’t even need a test. Just pick half the enemy force and click ’em like they’re taking Mystics.

Before the fight even starts.

Torrid. And yet not the most torrid tactic of 2012. That’s next time. Brace yourselves!

Some were trends, as seen in #10. Some were specific characters, like the last few.

#7 is both.

Gordon & Gordon’s Moving Service

It started with Lt. Gordon (The Dark Knight Rises 021). Here’s what I wrote back in July:

“His stats and standard powers are modest; his SP is game-warping, giving multiple keywords a lot of extra movement for the cost of his single power action. To be both character-accurate and game-balanced, it should’ve been limited to less-expensive Police-keyworded characters.”

Of course, I was reacting to this SP:

“Give Lt. Gordon a power action; you can immediately give him and up to two adjacent friendly characters who possess a team ability or keyword possessed by Lt. Gordon a move action as a free action, replacing all characters’ speed values with Lt. Gordon’s unmodified speed value.”

The Gotham City keyword is too deep to be giving its characters free movement like this. Worse, even the balancing suggestion I had back then is obsolete in light of figures that have come out since.

As bad as Lt. Jim is, his daughter Barbara, as Oracle (Streets of Gotham Fast Forces 001), takes it even further: She can give a cleared pal sharing her Birds of Prey or Justice League keywords a totally free move for half their speed. And unlike her pa, they don’t need to need to be adjacent or even VISIBLE.

At least she’s a Unique, unlike her pa, which keeps the Torrid potential of Ms. Gordon at bay. She also lacks the Gotham keyword(s), which prevent her from teaming with Papa for really awful combinations. But still.

Last year, Aragorn of the Lord of the Rings set seemed nearly broken. Now he almost seems tame.

Speaking of free mobility:

#6 Improved Movement

So on the one hand, something like Improved Movement is well overdue for HeroClix. It’s long been a bit of a crime that The Flash couldn’t run over water in ‘Clix the way he so often does in comics.

On the other hand, it’s given us torrid figures who just can’t be tied down or hindered by hardly ANYTHING anymore. The only upside is that Improved Movement is an ability that can be countered — YAY OUTWIT!! — so it’s not so bad as most of them aren’t Batman Allies or Stealthers.

(oh…wait…)

Number of characters with Improved Movement: 25

Number of those with Stealth or Batman Ally team ability: 15 (60%)

Ooog.

#8

Sentry & Void (Chaos War 057), the prize chase of the set, was one of the first pieces that unaided, on round 2 from his own starting area, could threaten the opponent still sitting in their starting area. Here’s how:

He has 11 range, 10 Hypersonic Speed and Multi-Attack, enabling him to move 20 squares and shoot with an effective 6 range. Or, thanks to Penetrating/Psychic Blast, he can move 10 with one action then sit and fire for 5 clicks on the second. And with Power Cosmic, he can do even worse damage the very next turn.

This isn’t even taking into account his ability swap out into either Void (Chaos War 045) or Sentry (Chaos War 035) who, when KO’d, instead come back as Sentry and Void (Chaos War 057) on his Regen click anyway. From there he can use Multi-Attack to try Regen twice and it all starts over again.

None of those are the truly torrid thing about Sentroid, though.

It’s his Avengers keyword.

They’re Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. That last being the operative word: HEROES. But when Sentry and the Void merged, in the comics? He was such a complete villain that none less than LOKI had to fight on the side of the Avengers to stop him from destroying the world.

“Avengers” is the LAST keyword Sentroid deserves, and yet he has it. What the hell?

Enchantress (Justice League 016) presents a similar problem. Her 250-point dial has a heaping pile of keywords: Suicide Squad, Justice League, Shadowpact. But the character that dial represents isn’t a member of any of those teams. Indeed, as her trait indicates, she’s actively an enemy of the Justice League in particular.

With extra-range and guaranteed damage on both Quake and Poison, this witch is a terror on the field to anyone she can reach. Her only weakness is an inability to safely push and being a groundpounder for the cost. Hitting her doesn’t help; she’s an Impervious Mystic and solid damage just lands her on Hypersonic Speed with Invuln. and Willpower — so much for that no-pushing weakness — and a long run of Probability Control.

Again. Justice League keyword. WHY?

Inexplicably getting the highly versatile keywords of their chief enemies kicks both these villainous beasticks from being ultra-strong to Torrid.

Next time: Another pair who are a pain.

#10 “Pick a power” pieces

One of HeroClix’s slogans used to be “It’s all on the dial.” That hasn’t really been true since the introduction of feats back in 2005 and especially with Special Powers’ debut in ’07, But in this year of power leap, we got some characters that aren’t even constrained by what actually does appears on their respective dials!

• Stranger (Galactic Guardians 043): This big fella not only can grow from normal to giant to colossal size each turn, but for much of his dial he gains a SP granting him use of any one power on the PAC. Wanna Outwit that SP? Hope you built in one of the very few tactics that can do it regardless of the Power Cosmic TA.
• Xavin (Galactic Guardians 022): goes a little further in that he isn’t even constrained by the click he’s on if he’s on either his first or last click: you can literally turn the dial to any click you want. It’s not quite any power, but with his rainbow dial he basically has access to 14 different powers when on clicks #1 and #6.
• At year’s end, Vixen (Streets of Gotham 028) got the ability to gain access to every standard-colored power showing on every Animal keyworded character on the battlefield, friend or foe, for the low price of a 1-in-6 chance of self-damage. On the right team or against the right opposition, she can potentially “have” every single power on the PAC — except Smoke Cloud — on one click.

As torrid as these characters and the power leap in design they represent seem to be, they really aren’t that bad by themselves. Stranger’s stats are pretty modest for his 213 price and he’s got to push to get to that crazy power. Vixen has to be built around to compensate for her average numbers and inborn abilities. And Xavin is most frequently used as pure support. But there’s another figure which does that better…

#9

Scarlet Witch (Chaos War Fast Forces 006)